With his departure peace was restored and the welcomes bestowed upon Gerald made him very happy and roused a wish in his heart to become as good a fellow as they all seemed to imagine him to be. With some shame he remembered his often ungrateful treatment of Mrs. Lucetta and her children, and described the family so graphically that Dorothy clapped her hands, exclaiming:
“I’m going right away to know them! I am! What darlings they must be, those little ‘Saints’ and sinners, and what a charming woman the mother must be. Melvin has told us how she served them with that poor pudding and sour buttermilk, just as if they were the greatest luxuries.”
Mrs. Calvert nodded, smiling:
“Yes, dear, I shall be glad to have you know her. She is a born gentlewoman and a good one—which is better. But now, has everybody had all the breakfast wanted? If so, let’s all go off to our arbor in the woods. ‘The Grotto,’ the girls named it, Gerald, and it’s beautiful. But where is Jim? Why should he have gone away from the Stillwell cottage before you, in that sudden way you mentioned?”
“I reckon he went to search for a runaway kid. The one they called Saint Augustine. Fancy such a name as that for the wildest little tacker ever trod shoe-leather—or went barefoot, I mean. That youngster looked like an angel and acted like a little imp. I should think his folks’d be glad to lose him.”
“No, Gerry, you don’t think that. You don’t want anybody to be unhappy now that we’re all so glad you’re well and back. I hope Jim will find the little Saint right soon and be back, too; but don’t you think they’ll be frightened about you? It just came to me—what can they think, when they come back and find you gone, except that you were out of your mind and wandered off? You that had been in bed till then!” asked Dorothy.
“Oh! they won’t bother about me. Jim’s been as good as gold and I’ve been pretty hateful, sometimes, I know. It’ll be a relief to him and Mrs. Stillwell that I’m off their hands. Why, folks, do you know? That slender slip of a woman does almost all their farm work, herself? Her husband—I fancied from what I had sense enough to understand—hates work, that kind, anyway, and she adores him. I know Jim took a hand, soon’s I was well enough, or good-natured enough, to let him off sticking inside with me. I never saw a fellow work so, I could see through the window by my bed. They hadn’t any horse and he ploughed with a cow! Fact. He dug potatoes, hoed corn, cleared up brush-wood—did that with his jack-knife—carried water—Couldn’t tell what he didn’t do! Oh! Mrs. Stillwell will be glad enough to be rid of me but she’ll hate to miss Jim. Hello, Elsa! What in the world!”
Mabel laughed and clapped her hands.
“Isn’t it the queerest thing? and isn’t it just jolly?
“She fell in love with them that morning when they came. Elsa, timid Elsa, is the only one of us not afraid of the monkeys! She’s captivated them, some way, and is actually training them to do whatever she wants. She’s taught them to walk, arm in arm, and to bow ‘Thank you’ for bits of Chloe’s cake. She punishes them when they catch the birds and—lots of things. Are you taking them for their ‘constitutional’ now, Elsa dear?”